Grasping mass violence: Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and the contribution of a local perspective and a network approach

The elimination of a population is generally conceived of as the result of an intentional plan “from above,” coordinated by a series of state institutions; this forms the basis of both the criminal definition and the paradigm of genocide. This article assesses this perspective, which has been inherited from studies of the Holocaust, in the context of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 using a network approach and a local perspective that take account both of a redistribution of coercive power among a multitude of armed individuals and of the local dynamics that drive perpetrators. Suitably transposed, these approaches might have something to contribute to reflections on the process of transitional justice.